If someone gave you a list of the ten people at your school who will make the best husbands or wives one day, a list based on a complex algorithm factoring in everything from GPA to personality traits to fashion sense, would you believe it? Even more importantly, would you act on it and try to get into a relationship with someone based on a rating of their future spouse potential?
The decision to marry someone is a big deal, certainly one that should be made thoughtfully and deliberately. You should absolutely seek out the qualities you would appreciate most in a life-partner. But you probably wouldn’t put too much stock in someone else’s ranking list no matter how scientific it might be.
That’s a bit how I feel about making college decisions based largely on college rankings or even the new College Scorecard which has been getting a lot of press lately.
The decision of where to attend college is a big one. And as college costs continue to rise, so do the stakes. I hate the idea of a student taking on mountains of debt to attend college without a clear sense of how or even if they’ll ever be able to pay it back. And I love the idea of giving families more, accurate information so they can make informed choices about what college to attend and how much to pay to do it.
But like a marriage, a college education is a complex thing. Someone else’s perfect match might never be the right fit for you. And just as both partners need to commit to making a marriage work, wherever you go to college, you’ll need to do your part to extract as much value as possible from the experience.
So yes, avail yourself of the increasing volume of information about particular colleges. Be thoughtful and deliberate in your choices. But please remember that there’s a big difference between evaluating a college and measuring one. You’re better off being your own matchmaker than you are relying on someone else’s list.